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Updated: May 15, 2025
Several horsemen have already crossed and are awaiting us on the opposite shore. Kiftan Sahib and another officer with a henna-tinted beard are in charge of the party taking me back. Besides myself and these two, the party consists of eleven horsemen; with sundry modifications, their general appearance, arms, and dress resemble the make-up of a Persian sowar rather than the regular Afghan soldier.
A wild-looking, busby-decked crowd of Khorassani goatherds from a neighboring village follow behind me across the level mudflats leading to the stream, vociferously clamoring for me to ride. They shout persistently: "H-o-i! Sowar shuk; tomasha! tomasha!" even when they see the difficult task I have of it getting the bicycle through the mud.
He is greatly astonished to hear of the route by which I entered the country, as no traveller ever entered Afghanistan across the Dasht-i-na-oomid before. I tell him that I am going to Kandahar and Quetta, and suggest that he send a sowar with me to guide the way.
"No, no," he said, "my time is finished. I am too old." "Nay, Sahib," said the sowar as he hung on painfully to his pulley, "the body may be old but the brain is young." The Field-Marshal strove to reply but could not. He suddenly turned on his heel and rushed up the companion-ladder. When halfway up he remembered the O.C. and retraced his steps. The tears were streaming down his face.
The way we eat and drink, the way we walk and sit, the way we wear our clothes and boots, the way we wash, every little thing is absolutely different from the methods and manners of the East. These things Shah Sowar pointed out with much politeness, and great persistency, to Sheikh Abdul Qadir, late Smith.
"Sowar shuk; sowar shuk! tomasha; tomasha!" a thousand people cry in the stuffy, ill-paved bazaar as they struggle and push and surge about me, giving me barely room to squeeze through them.
A sowar displayed his weapon proudly to some Sikhs, who grinned in appreciation. "How many?" was the question asked on all sides. "Twenty-one," replied the officer. "But they're full of fight." Orders were now issued for the brigade to camp on the open ground near Inayat Kila, which, translated, means Fort Grant, and is the name of a considerable stone stronghold belonging to the Khan of Khar.
Shah Sowar at once grasped what a narrow escape they had had, for an Englishman found in that region in disguise was a dead man. So soon therefore as it was dark he persuaded his master to saddle and move on a few miles, lest further reflection might shed a light on the dim suspicions of the chief.
"Don't fret," replied Smith, alias Sheikh Abdul Qadir; "I am going to remain a prince all right; for I propose passing myself off as a near relation of the Amir, a refugee from Kabul." "As your Honour wishes," was the resigned reply; but Shah Sowar saw big rollers ahead.
About a mile or so out of the city, a mounted sowar in scarlet and gold uniform, and armed with two huge horse-pistols and a long cavalry sabre, galloped up to the caravan. The prince shortly afterwards appeared, mounted on a huge camel, the tail and hind quarters of which were ornamented with intricate patterns stamped on the hide by some peculiar process.
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